"I think everybody has the same thought on Tiger," Brandt Snedeker said. "I'm sure he's going to be up there. If I'm there Sunday afternoon with Tiger, if I'm playing with him, it's probably going to be a good week."

Tiger Woods, he meant.

Woods descends upon this Masters carrying a familiar sense of inevitability.

True, he has not won here since 2005, the year before Augusta National was stretched and configured to keep him from beating up par-4s with sand wedges.

A hydrant got in the way of history, on Thanksgiving 2009. So has a swing alteration and other injuries. Now the window seems to be closing again.

Woods has already won Doral, Bay Hill and San Diego in 2013, all on courses that he has possessed since his PGA tour childhood.

Augusta National would also qualify. He has won here four times and has a scoring average of 70.37, lowest of anyone who has played at least 25 Masters rounds.

Beyond that, Woods has 12 top 10 finishes in 18 events. That includes finishes of third, second, second, sixth, fourth and fourth from 2006-11. He has played 70 Masters rounds and has broken par 72 in 38 of them.

"I've been here on Sundays with a chance," he said. "I just haven't made enough putts. The only person that theoretically didn't really putt well was Vijay (Singh), when he won (in 2000), and he hit more greens than anybody ever hit to do it.

"But you have to make a majority of the putts inside 10 feet, and you've got to be just a great lag putter for the week."

Three years ago, Augusta National chairman Billy Payne used his pulpit to scold Woods' behavior. Now Woods is back on the supermarket tabloid covers, with new friend Lindsay Vonn, the Olympic skiing champion.

They share scarred-up knees and the loneliness that only champions experience. Woods reacquired world No. 1 status when he won at Doral. And, of course, Woods knows how it feels when life goes downhill.

"Life is all about balance, and trying to find the equilibrium, and I feel very balanced," Woods said.

So is putting.

In the instructive "strokes gained" category, Woods leads the PGA Tour by a wide margin. He was sixth last year and not in the top 10 in any year before that (the statistic became official in 2004).

"The stroke looks like it used to," said former PGA Tour stalwart Lanny Wadkins. "Before that it was very rigid and mechanical, and he was trying to force the ball into the hole. But then his whole game looks different. He tends to go down when he drives the ball, but if he drives it well here, he'll be tough to beat."

The ticking of the life-clock is audible, if not deafening. Woods turned 37 last Dec. 30. Only five of the 25 top-ranked players in the world are older.

"Jack Nicklaus won his 18th major when he was 46 years old," Woods said. "So there are plenty of opportunities for me. I feel that I'm in the middle of my career."

He did not point that Nicklaus was only 40 when he won majors Nos. 16 and 17. Nicklaus himself says Woods still has a good chance to get the four majors he needs for 18. He also said Tiger's chances diminish radically each time he lets a Masters escape him.

Left undetermined, for now, is the effectiveness of Woods' centrifugal force.

In the '00s, Woods would start moving to the top of the scoreboard and almost become a human weather system. Everyone would scatter like tumbleweeds, particularly the unfortunates like Aaron Baddeley, Luke Donald and Stephen Ames who were playing beside him.

In five of his 14 major victories, Woods won by five or more strokes, including the record 12-shot blitz here in 1997.

Rory McIlroy was 7 years old then. Keegan Bradley was 10.

"Some of the guys weren't out here when he was in that space," Adam Scott said. "He's far from running away with it. He's just returned to No. 1. And that's just a number at the end of the day. It's not a foregone conclusion."

Wadkins, who excelled in the '70s and '80s, smiled at the thought of time travel.

"I would have loved to have seen him in our era, when we had guys who would never back down," Wadkins said. "They would have relished the challenge to beat him. Guys like Raymond Floyd weren't afraid of Nicklaus, so it wouldn't' have bothered them.

"But some of these kids out here, I see the same thing in them. And they weren't the ones getting waxed every week."

Maybe so. But maybe those who ignore history are condemned to suffer it.

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